bltngames

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I Love To Shoot At Trouble

During the Steam Christmas Sale I ended up buying Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 because it was like $6 or $7 and I'm in the mood for a new racing game to chew up. EA already gave the game away for free in like 2015, but that meant installing "The EA App". I figured having it on Steam would be more convenient.

You'd think so.

It's not! As part of the first time launch, it installs "The EA App" anyway, which also means it found and uninstalled whatever version of Origin I still had (I wasn't aware I'd ever reinstalled Origin since my HDD crash). As part of this process, it also asked me for my EA password, I misread Firefox's stored password incorrectly, and went through the trouble of resetting my EA account with a new password before linking it to Steam. To my surprise, EA's been sitting on my seven year old cloud save from the few minutes I played of this on Origin in 2017, and asks if I want to import it. Sure, I guess.

So that's ten minutes down the drain before I can even boot up the game. Okay, fine, the game finally launches. Gotta wait while it boots up The EA App each time before it boots into the game, gotta wait for the title screen logo animation, gotta wait for a 10-15 second load screen because even though this game came out in 2012 it's gotta ping some always-online "Autolog" leaderboard whatever. Once it connects, it has to do a slow cinematic pan across your car, telling you what your online rivals have done since the last time you connected, and what kind of equipment you have on your car.

All told, every time you boot up Most Wanted 2012, you're looking at a 30-45 second wait before the game actually hands over control and lets you start driving.

Pull the accelerator and instantly Most Wanted SCREAMS at me:

Fair enough. I'm using a Dualshock 4, and the Playstation 4 did not release until over a full year after this game. Click to the menu it's asking of me and see that the control binding menu is awful -- it's one of those super oldschool ones, like binding keys one by one in Doom 2. I have no idea what these buttons are supposed to be in terms of Xbox equivalents, and I realize that Steam has this thing called "Steam Input" that's supposed to be handling all of this anyway. Steam Input generally makes my Dualshock 4 look like an Xbox controller to most games.

I exit out of Most Wanted, force Steam Input to "on" (I was messing with its settings recently, so I thought maybe it was disabled), and relaunch the game again. Wait for the EA App to boot up, gotta wait through the title screen logos, gotta wait 10-15 seconds on a loading screen, gotta wait another 5-10 on the cinematic pan across my car. I have now spent a minute and a half total waiting for this game to boot while I troubleshoot this.

Pull the accelerator. Instead of it complaining about my controller, straight up nothing happens. That's weird. The Start button works, the analog stick seems to work in the pause menu, but the triggers do not. The face buttons also do nothing. Upon checking the settings, that's because Most Wanted has settled on keyboard mode, even though it's clearly accepting some controller input. After poking at it, it does not seem like there's any way to get it to see my controller.

This makes Most Wanted a special game, because a lot of games I play will happily accept that Steam Input is telling it I have an Xbox controller connected even when I absolutely do not. But this is the rare 1% that seems to be incompatible. It's time to bring in the big guns.

Mayflash makes a terrific little passthrough device called the Magic NS, and the general purpose of this device is that it lets you use any controller on any other platform. An Xbox controller on a Playstation? No sweat. A Playstation controller on the Switch? It'll handle it. If you upgrade to the Magic NS2, you even get full gyro support. Every NS device also doubles as a Bluetooth dongle, so you can stay wireless if that's your thing. I love it so much I bought two, because generally they're only about $20.

A Magic NS2 for my Switch... and Magic NS1 for my PC. Strictly for scenarios like this, where a game expects an Xbox controller and Steam Input fails its camouflage.

Plug the NS1 in, connect my Dualshock 4, and once again boot up Most Wanted and wait the 45 seconds to get through the EA app, logos, loading, and the cinematic pan across my car. More than two full minutes now looking at this junk, and that's not counting the time spent outside of the game troubleshooting this in menus or digging out dongles or whatever.

Pull the accelerator... and my car starts to drive! I can steer! It works! Of course it works. The Magic NS never lets me down. I pull up to the first race event...

Press J and K to start the event.

Those are, uh. Those are keyboard keys. I'm using a controller. The controller is fully functional. You don't need to tell me this in keyboard controls. This isn't going to be one of those games, is it? The kind that still tells you everything in the keyboard shortcuts no matter what?

I drop into the menus again and see Most Wanted is still stuck on Keyboard mode and won't let me switch to anything else, even though I'm clearly using a fully functional controller now. This can't be right. But then I remember: Steam Input is still turned on, and when I forced Steam Input to be on, Most Wanted got stuck in this keyboard mode.

Exit out of the game, tell Steam to turn off Steam Input for this specific game only, and relaunch. Wait through all that crap again. We're up to three minutes just waiting for the game to start, and probably closing in on 20 minutes since I first decided I wanted to try Most Wanted.

Pull the accelerator, it works, drive up to the first event, and...

Pull LT and RT to start the event.

FINALLY. HOLY SHIT.

On the plus side: this game controls a lot better than I remember. It's a decent middleground between Criterion's heavier-feeling Hot Pursuit (2011) and the snappier Burnout Paradise. Though I could do with a lot less full screen flashing or the fact that Autolog alerts hide the minimap for some reason.

Not pictured, but the "always online" nature can also be frustrating if you pause, unpause, and find you have to quickly re-pause again a second time. That second pause will actually incur a loading spinner because it hasn't finished syncing with the server from the first pause, apparently. This game is going on 12 years old.

Anyway. This was a nightmare.

HOT BONUS

"The EA App" now starts up with Windows and is nagging me to enter the login credentials I already entered last night. I have to go through extra steps to get it to leave me alone and not do this

THE RIDE NEVER ENDS

#need for speed #most wanted #criterion games #ea #electronic arts #origin #the ea app #steam #valve #xbox #steam input #troubleshooting #mayflash #Youtube #writing

[bltngames]

Mod Spotlight: Sonic Forces Overclocked

So this is an interesting little thing. For those of you not aware, Sonic Forces Overclocked (if I'm remembering right) was originally an attempt to "fix" Sonic Forces by expanding all of the levels and even completely rewriting the story. Obviously that's a big task, and the developers eventually realized that, scaling it down into what could best be described as an "Encore" of sorts -- an epilogue story where the villains make one last desperate final push, spread out across remixed versions of eight of the game's best levels. All told, it's about an hour worth of content.

Which is... actually totally fine. With eight (technically seven, but the final boss still counts) levels, there's plenty to see. Actually, pacing is probably Overclocked's strongest suit.

The original Sonic Forces was a pacing disaster; levels often felt like they were cut off at the knees, usually ending just as they were getting started. That's never true in Overclocked, as each level took me a good 3-5+ minutes to finish. Levels in Overclocked are also massively improved in other ways, too -- all that extra length is put to good use with Sonic's trademark alternate pathways, new enemies, and new interactive elements. Interactivity is up across the board. Sonic Forces loved to lock you into long, obnoxious scripted set pieces but Overclocked keeps you firmly in control most of the time.

Which brings me to something I'm not entirely sure is a complaint: difficulty balance. If you've been reading this blog long enough you know I can be pretty picky about difficulty balancing, and the way its handled in Overclocked is interesting.

Generally speaking, Overclocked treats the boost like "expert mode." It's there for people who know the levels already and want to push themselves to do it faster. At first it's fine -- boosting means you'll miss some alternate paths (shortcuts, most likely) but you can still bumble your way to the end of the level and coast by on C ranks. The further you get into the game, though, the more it starts to punish you for trying to go fast without knowing what you're doing. The safety nets that would catch you in earlier levels go away and Overclocked tells you to either slow down or get serious.

Which... I think I'm fine with? The thing it brings to mind for me is the two Sonic Rush games. My favorite one is Sonic Rush Adventure, because it's more accessible (read: easier to learn) than the first Sonic Rush. At the same time, the first Sonic Rush ends up being the more replayable of the two games, because it's a lot harder to master. The higher skill ceiling has kept me coming back to Sonic Rush long after it felt like I wrung all of the gameplay out of Sonic Rush Adventure.

So the idea of a Sonic game not only facilitating a higher skill ceiling but maybe even encouraging that? Not the worst way to balance things, as long as you keep the less skilled players in mind and communicate things correctly. Which, at least for me, I feel like Overclocked does. It started to kick my butt at certain points, but never in a way that felt too mean or unfair. And that's exactly the way it should be, though it should be noted I haven't exactly put myself through the hell of trying to go for higher ranks.

The one real complaint I have about the levels is something I've been observing for years, and unfortunately my fears came true: the lighting.

I've talked about my monitor in the past. I bought it somewhere between 2011 and 2012, so it's getting up there in years. I believe it was the first thing I ever purchased with my Youtube Earnings. It's starting to get kind of dim in its old age, and it's exacerbated by the fact I like to keep it on its "Theater Mode" setting, which gives me really good black levels (for an LCD) and amazing color. But it's an aging monitor, so those amazing black levels end up feeling a little dark, depending on the game. For those of you who caught my halloween streams this year, you know I ended up switching my monitor to its "Standard Mode" because it flattens the contrast and makes the darkest darks more visible. It could be argued that I should just leave the monitor in "Standard Mode" at this point, but I can't stand how Windows looks with it turned on.

To cut to the chase, I had to turn on "Standard Mode" for Sonic Forces Overclocked. In keeping with the theme of this being an encore, a lot of levels have wildly new lighting applied to them, with many levels set later in the evening or at night.

This blankets a lot of levels in a single color and lots of high-contrast shadows, which makes character, enemy, and hazard visibility incredibly difficult. In some levels with a lot of high-frequency noise (like Chemical Plant) it can be difficult to tell where your character even is on screen sometimes. In other levels, like the revamped Mystic Forest, the blue-on-purple-on-teal color scheme makes for a readability nightmare (as does the Death Egg Core level with Buddy, with a red character navigating a level full of orange fog, lit by pink and yellow lights).

When you're running through these stages at a couple hundred miles per hour, it all blurs together into something that's sometimes either too dark or too muddy to parse. At one point Sonic jokes that Infinite's aesthetic is "monochrome colors" but I'd rather have the levels be readable at a glance than hanging a lampshade on it. Things just need to be a little brighter, with a little more diversity of color to highlight the edges of roads and incoming hazards.

The story is... fine. It's not incredibly deep, and it doesn't need to be, so it works well enough. There's actually a surprising amount here, though, from mid-level chatter, map screen debriefings, and even full on cutscenes. Voice acting duties seem to be handled by Adrenaline Dubs, who I subscribed to last year for their surprisingly good dubs of Archie and IDW Sonic comics. They turn in some pretty high quality work here, often rivaling Sega's official dubbing efforts. My only real complaint is that Sonic's dialog is a little too referential; his call-outs during levels often reference other infamous lines from different Sonic games ("The whole city's on fire!", etc.), and sort of like how the game pokes fun at the monochromatic lighting, there's a line where Sonic even cringes at his own dialog a little bit. "We're admitting it's bad, but still doing it anyway" is not a healthy design ethos.

Earlier I mentioned cutscenes, and rather than the complex, high-budget cutscenes Sega had in the original Forces, Overclocked instead opts for motion comic videos. Artistic duties for these cutscenes are shared between a handful of 4 or 5 different artists, each bringing their own art style to their scenes. Generally, I think this is a good move. A little more consistency between artists would make it feel a bit more polished, but seeing the art style change between scenes has its own charms, too. It really drives home how much of Sonic Forces Overclocked was not only a team effort, but to some degree, a community effort. Many different hands touched this project, and it is better for it.

It's easy to focus on the negative things I said about Sonic Forces Overclocked here and think I came away not really liking it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think this is a genuinely impressive mod, with significantly better level design than the base game. It has a few problems, sure, but the overall product, when taken as a whole, is absolutely wonderful. This might be a bit incendiary and hyperbolic, but this close to the top of the list as the most fun I've had with a Sonic game this year. If you own Sonic Forces on Steam, it's not to be missed.

Download: https://gamebanana.com/mods/485051

#sonic forces #writing #mod spotlight #sonic forces overclocked #modding #sega #sonic the hedgehog

[bltngames]

Let's Talk About Fortnite's Big New Update

It's been about a week since Fortnite added its three new main modes, so I figured I could jot down some notes about how I feel about each one, since I continue to play an absolute obscene amount of this game, given it's basically the only live service game I've ever connected with.

Lego Fortnite

This is maybe the biggest new mode added to the game, and at a glance, you might think it's their take on Minecraft. Having put about 10-20 hours into it now, I can tell you it's a lot more like Valheim, sprinkled with a bit of Terraria. It's a survival game, where your goal is to start a town out in the procedurally generated wilderness. As your town levels up in size and complexity, you attract NPCs to take up residence, which you can put to work gathering resources, manage farms, cook food, or party up to help you explore the world and raid various caves.

There's enough content here to support that 10-20 hours, but you'll eventually run out of things to do, given there's just three biomes and only a handful of creatures. Updates are already promising things like merchants, more creatures and even quest givers, so it definitely feels like it has legs, and I think what's here plays well enough. It just feels more like a foundation right now. This is one of those things where, like, it may be worth checking in on 6 months down the road, because there's a lot of potential it could grow into. And hey, it's the only one of these modes that doesn't have any additional fees hooked on top of it yet. That's a plus.

Rocket Racing

Created by Psyonix, this is a racing mode that's a little hard to quantify. The actual racing mechanics themselves are solid: drift to charge up three levels of boost, with a kind of "active reload" system that can almost double your boost if you hit it just right. There's a jump button, and your jump jets can be used to hover over hazards. After you jump, you can also use the drift button to perform a flip in four directions, because your car can also drive up walls and across the ceiling. So, if you jump, push up on the stick, and then tap the drift key, you'll flip up on to the ceiling. Despite all of this mechanical complexity, Rocket Racing still feels too simple to have much lasting power. Some of the fun of a racing game is how everyone tunes their vehicles differently, but so far there's just the the one Rocket Racing car.

Epic and Psyonix could be going for more of a Trackmania feel, and user-generated tracks (the main appeal of Trackmania) are something they're teasing for Rocket Racing, but it's worth mentioning that Trackmania has always seemed kind of niche. It's never had the success of something like Forza Horizon or even Need for Speed.

This also has one major strike against it that Trackmania does not: you collide with other players in Rocket Racing, which is actually sort of a nightmare thanks to network latency. I've run into a lot of shockingly aggressive opponents that treat the game like bumper cars, and every time they crash into you, it's like rolling the dice as to whether or not the collision will actually register. Sometimes your opponent harmlessly slides off the side of your car, and other times the most gentle tap will send you into a tailspin. I wouldn't call the mode terrible, but judging by Fortnite's own menu system, player numbers are dropping fast. It's cool being able to flip around between walls and the ceiling, but there's not enough to sink your teeth into long-term besides overpriced vehicle cosmetics.

Fortnite Festival

This is literally just Rock Band 5. The main change is the way you play notes -- there's no plastic instrument support yet (that's coming later, apparently), so you're limited to playing it on either a keyboard or a gamepad. The way the buttons are mapped out by default, there are certain combinations of notes they are never going to make you press together, because it's impossible to hit both left and right on the d-pad simultaneously. Besides that, I'm not kidding, it's actually just Rock Band, and unfortunately I'm one of those people who struggles to connect with rhythm games.

I love something like Parappa the Rapper or even Theatrhythm, but I just don't connect with a lot of the genre in the same way most people do. This version does at least connect to Fortnite's cosmetics system, so you can have Michael Myers singing vocals in Gangnam Style, backed up by Beast Boy and Ellen Ripley wearing a Ghostbusters proton pack. During downtime where you might not have any notes to play, you're given the option to use your Fortnite emotes. That's fun enough on its own, but it's extra fun on skins with transformation abilities. Going back to Beast Boy, it's fun to watch the camera pan by him in his regular Teen Titans attire, only for him to suddenly be a bass-playing gorilla the next time you see him.

Also included are "Jam Tracks", which let you play specific pieces of songs outside of the Rock Band mode. So if you want, during a Battle Royale match, you could start playing the bassline to Seven Nation Army at any time, anywhere, and even change the pitch and tempo. Other players can choose to join in, adding vocal tracks, or lead guitar, or drums, all from different songs, creating a strange sort of on-the-fly mashup. It's not super deep, but I suppose it's there to justify the fact that songs in Fortnite Festival are roughly $5 each. Festival also has its own Battle Pass, at $18 -- almost twice what the Battle Royal Pass costs, and unlocking stuff on the Festival Pass feels like the slowest possible grind. Too many Festival quests only give 10 or 15 "points" towards the pass, when you often need THOUSANDS for the next unlock. Kind of a bummer!

Battle Royale

As a bonus, some commentary on the current chapter of BR: as of this latest iteration of Fortnite, it feels like they've basically rebooted the entire game. If you've been paying attention to industry news, Epic's had quite the exodus of high-ranking staff lately, leaving me with a feeling that a completely different team is handling Fortnite now. Every piece of the gameplay has been retooled seemingly overnight, from healing systems to movement speed. The best way to sum it all up is that it feels a lot more like PUBG now. But like, worse? Weapons have attachments now, foregrips and sights and stuff, but there's no way to pull a sight off one gun and put it on another. You can only buy attachments at a workbench, of which there's only, like, seven on the entire map.

So generally you're stuck with whatever attachments are already on a gun when you find it, and there's no easy way to compare attachments if you want to swap for something else. The previous system -- which was basically just WoW's rarity system -- was a lot clearer and easy to understand. A purple gun is always better than blue. Now those waters are a lot muddier, and you don't have access to the information you need to make informed decisions about what is better than what. The simplicity that made Fortnite more accessible than PUBG is gone now. The other changes just take some getting used to, but the slower movement does mean running from a closing storm circle is a lot harder in a way that feels like nobody on the team really understood or accounted for.

The main issue is that Battle Royale is still trying to be the "spotlight" mode in Fortnite right now, which means its trying to incorporate a little bit of everything and it's hurting the experience. The new cosmetics locker system is a total nightmare to use, more tedious in every single conceivable way, to such a degree it's hard to comprehend anyone actually thinking it's a legitimate improvement. Fortnite also tries to pull in your Rocket Racing cosmetics to BR now, but only for certain vehicles, which in itself taps into a long standing frustration with Fortnite's handling of vehicle cosmetics overall.

Close to five years ago, Fortnite introduced its "wraps" system for guns that work like liveries in a racing game -- basically a custom texture for your gun. Wraps have inconsistently applied to other things as well. Fortnite's earliest vehicles like the golf kart and quadbike accepted wraps, as did boats. There are even skins now that can wear wraps as clothing patterns.

But cars could never have wraps applied to them. There were hints that maybe wraps would eventually apply to vehicles, as there were updates where they started appearing on pieces of a vehicle, but never the whole thing. Now we finally get vehicle cosmetics, but it only applies to one vehicle type, and transforms it into a completely different car body? It feels half-baked and deeply arbitrary.

Fortnite has often had many different vehicle classes on the map together, between pickups, sports cars, sedans, and hauler trucks. But now the sports cars are the Rocket Racing car? It's cool on the surface, but a strange portent of future seasons. What of the other vehicle types? They're not in the game right now, but will they be? Will sports cars be a permanent fixture of the Fortnite map going forward, so the cosmetics always carry across between modes? Is this a hint that other vehicle types are coming to Rocket Racing, and that eventually, we'll be able to apply cosmetics to everything?

Which is to say nothing about the fact that wraps don't even seem to apply to guns anymore. There's a lot of systems that hook into wraps that they can't just get rid of -- but it definitely seems like whoever is in charge of things right now is trying to find a way to ignore them, starting with the core functionality they were invented for.

Like a lot of things about what's happening to Battle Royale in Chapter 5, it feels super weird, and very divorced from the Fortnite I used to know and enjoy. Their attempts to try and tie everything together like this so that Battle Royale can have elements of all (or most) of the other modes incorporated into it just don't mesh very well or feel very necessary. They're recreating and then solving problems that were already solved four years ago.

Which is ultimately the bummer: I'm not sold that any of this needs to be inside of Fortnite, and I don't think it's going to pay off in the end. It's hurting the core experience a little bit and the best, most fun new modes would have still been fun as standalone games.

I just don't see the point. How big is big enough, Epic?

#writing #epic games #fortnite #lego fortnite #fortnite festival #rocket racing #psyonix #harmonix #rock band

[bltngames]

Downloaded a demo for something called Van Hellswing during one of the previous Steam demo events, basically on the name alone. I saw clips of a grappling hook gun and gothic environments and decided I was sold.

A retro shooter (a, ugh, boomer shooter) mixed with a bit of Castlevania or perhaps Bloodborne flavor? And a grappling hook? I was primed to fall in love.

Tonight, I finally gave it a shot.

Unfortunately, it's a Devil Daggers sort of game where you're locked in a tiny arena and just go for score. I am one of the rare few people on this planet that just did not like Devil Daggers. I thought the aesthetic and monsters were rad, but being trapped in a single tiny room forever did not appeal to me, no matter how well tuned it was. Ergo, Van Hellswing immediately gave me a sour taste.

It does give you a little more space to move around in, and a little more to look at, but I'd argue it's a lot more one-dimensional than Devil Daggers. It's also a demo, so maybe more variety is forthcoming, but right now the only enemies I ever saw were bats of varying color and ability. Some move faster than others, some shoot at you, etc. But they're all the same bat. And all you have is a single charge-up shotgun.

And unlike Devil Daggers, where you're this tight, well-oiled machine that can elegantly glide around the arena, Van Hellswing makes you slow, heavy, and floaty, like a bat-blasting wrecking ball. I was starting to scratch the surface of some of the more fun weight-based tricks you could do with chaining bunny hops and grapples, but my first impressions were not great.

Also the very, very first thing I noticed was the textures.

Van Hellswing sells itself on a retro art style that looks pretty alright as long as you don't stop and stare. Whoever is making the game does not actually seem to know how to have real, genuine retro textures in their games, so what it appears they're doing is taking pixel art and scaling it up to modern texture resolution. If you really look up close, this gives surfaces this strange half-step of looking like pixel art but still getting filtered and compressed. It feels really hack-y and makes it look double gross in a way that isn't retro.

A shame about this one.

#writing #van hellswing #castlevania #bloodborne #fps #boomer shooter #demo

[bltngames]

Polished off Jam 3 today. Out of probably 20 maps, I had 4 or 5 left, and as it turns out... a few of these were a little more Halloween oriented. The problem was, some of them just weren't named, so I figured maybe they were the worst maps of the bunch.

Like the top left map: an absolutely massive environment, featuring four houses, a field, trainyard, the ruins of an old apartment complex, and some kind of power plant facility. You are basically turned loose to explore at your leisure. It kind of reminded me of a Painkiller level, where it feels more like a portfolio piece that they jammed monsters into after the fact. I kind of finished it by accident, too. Not super clear what I did.

Top right map felt like a sequel to Jam 2's acid-filled medieval village. I think it was called something like the Necromancer's Swamp? Felt almost like a Metroid game for how it branched off into all these spokes but always returned you to the central hub at the end. Had a boss fight that crashed Quakespasm every time it died. Thankfully, it was easy enough to noclip through the final door it was guarding.

Bottom left was "The Banquet" which was maybe the most normal Quake map of this entire jam. There was some text about how "dinner is served... and you're the main course!" but it barely registered. Nice architecture, though.

Bottom right was a medieval city with stellar art direction. One screenshot doesn't convey much, but it's so full of color, with great lighting and intricate architecture. It's more of a collect-a-thon -- the idea is that there are three books per the four major districts and you have to collect them all to unlock the final challenge and exit the map. Some books require you to puzzle out a platforming challenge, or you get locked in a crypt with some zombies, or you have to solve a small puzzle. Nothing super revolutionary, but it's fun and easy on the eyes.

There were a couple of other maps, but I did not take screenshots of them and already they've left my brain.

I think I also have an idea why so many of these maps seem to involve some kind of singular, central zone that must be climbed and explored. These Halloween Jams were hosted by Func_Msgboard, and given the discussions on there, it seems like, beyond the concept of "Halloween", a lot of these maps are trying to replicate the pacing of a Metroidvania.

Suddenly it makes perfect sense! While some of these maps are just regular old Quake maps, a lot of the creative thought was put towards making a space meant to be explored, unlocked, and solved. Some maps even delve into the new power-ups provided by Arcane Dimensions, such as the double jump boots and the blaster belt. Those are supposed to be Metroid-style upgrades! (Like, literally, the Arcane Dimensions documentation describes them as "Vania Items").

Shows why you really should pay attention to the documentation instead of just launching yourself into this stuff completely cold, I guess.

On Quake Halloween Jam 3

I remember really liking Quake Halloween Jam 2. But with the way things in my life have been since Jam 2, plus my general forgetfulness, it did not even occur to me that there may have been a Quake Halloween Jam 3 or even a 4.

So I've spent a few hours tonight trying to cure a bad mood with a little catharsis via Halloween Jam 3. It works, too. I first figured it out over a decade ago -- I was fooling around in a Garry's Mod zombie slaughter map, just zoning out while I busted props and blew stuff up. When I was done, I realized the grouchy mood I'd been suffering for most of that day was gone and I felt a lot better. It sounds weird, but sometimes you just have pent up anger for whatever reason and video games can be a healthy outlet.

Back to the Halloween Jam, I really enjoyed Jam 2 because it was just a lot of pretty decent Quake maps, but set in places like... a spooky farm during harvest season.

Or a village sieged by neon green acid underneath a purple sky, two of Halloween's signature colors.

Or even a map set inside and around a gigantic jack-o-lantern.

Jam 3's maps are kind of just... regular Quake maps, to some degree. I guess they're sometimes a little darker than usual, but after playing over half of them, there aren't very many that evoke the feeling of Halloween specifically. That's not entirely the Jam's fault, I guess. Until Doom 3, I'd say Quake 1 was the game that felt like it bore the most of iD's horror sensibilities -- its mixture of gothic, sci-fi and cosmic horror gave it a very strange tone, which lends itself very well to spooky maps.

Ironically, one of the very first maps I picked in the Jam was something called "Hall-o-Win" which both demonstrates my point and also acts as maximum catharsis: it's mostly just a series of very long hallways with power-ups at the end and a lot of monsters along the way. A slaughter map in other words, though it does gradually start asking you for more strategy than "blast everything and never stop moving."

But a theme in a lot of these maps is less Halloween and more just, like, complex mazes. It's probably the pressure of a deadline talking, but a lot of these maps seem to orbit around a single central room that must be scaled, solved, and traversed. Take "Blackvenom Retreat," the greenish map seen at the top of the post. Most of the map is in one central lake area, with three big cubist structures sitting above the water. It plays out like climbing a construction site, as you go up ladders and leap between buildings in search of crystals to power whatever this thing does.

Or "Abbeytoir", a candle lit mansion that feels more like it fell out of Wrath: Aeon of Ruin with its endless hallways and side rooms that all confusingly loop back in on each other. It's not a very big map, but combined with how dark it is, how similar a lot of the rooms look, and how everything has at least 3-5 exits, as I opened up most of the doors near the end of the map I completely lost my ability to navigate when everything blurred into endless stairs, hallways, and switches.

And then there's "Us," a conceptually haunting map where the map creator's body has been disassembled and scattered amongst Quake's brushes. A texture for his head and hair unwrap along the skyline, you'll find nipples you can push like buttons, and floating eyes that watch your every step. "Strange" is putting it mildly, but it too is mainly one big room where the puzzle is to climb up ramps and platforms in order to reach the exit.

But there is one map I unexpectedly fell in love with -- "Approach of the Second Sun." This map is good enough it practically feels like it's own whole separate game.

The story is that a second, dark sun is approaching our reality, casting its curse on the land. This provides the map with its unique visual style, where the fog is used to invert the light. Effectively, the closer something is to you, the darker it gets. As objects get further away, they fade into the white fog, making for a game of low visibility and eerie silhouettes. The map uses this in its favor, as you spend most of it navigating a ritual site littered with statues, with the twist being that not everything you encounter is actually a statue.

There are tells, of course. Living monsters have subtle idle animations, so if you pay attention closely, you can pick out what's inanimate and what's alive. But the map also knows this, and plays with that expectation sometimes, bringing certain statues to life when you least expect it. It makes you jumpy and paranoid every time you turn a corner and see the outline of a monster and wait for a worst case scenario that doesn't always happen. It's masterclass stuff, and the map is big enough that it took me almost an hour to ultimately solve (like a lot of the other maps, it is a little easy to get lost).

I've got a few more maps left in Jam 3, and then I've got all of Jam 4 to look forward to. Hopefully there's something a little more seasonally flavorful waiting me.

#quake #writing #map jam #halloween #id software

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On Quake Halloween Jam 3

I remember really liking Quake Halloween Jam 2. But with the way things in my life have been since Jam 2, plus my general forgetfulness, it did not even occur to me that there may have been a Quake Halloween Jam 3 or even a 4.

So I've spent a few hours tonight trying to cure a bad mood with a little catharsis via Halloween Jam 3. It works, too. I first figured it out over a decade ago -- I was fooling around in a Garry's Mod zombie slaughter map, just zoning out while I busted props and blew stuff up. When I was done, I realized the grouchy mood I'd been suffering for most of that day was gone and I felt a lot better. It sounds weird, but sometimes you just have pent up anger for whatever reason and video games can be a healthy outlet.

Back to the Halloween Jam, I really enjoyed Jam 2 because it was just a lot of pretty decent Quake maps, but set in places like... a spooky farm during harvest season.

Or a village sieged by neon green acid underneath a purple sky, two of Halloween's signature colors.

Or even a map set inside and around a gigantic jack-o-lantern.

Jam 3's maps are kind of just... regular Quake maps, to some degree. I guess they're sometimes a little darker than usual, but after playing over half of them, there aren't very many that evoke the feeling of Halloween specifically. That's not entirely the Jam's fault, I guess. Until Doom 3, I'd say Quake 1 was the game that felt like it bore the most of iD's horror sensibilities -- its mixture of gothic, sci-fi and cosmic horror gave it a very strange tone, which lends itself very well to spooky maps.

Ironically, one of the very first maps I picked in the Jam was something called "Hall-o-Win" which both demonstrates my point and also acts as maximum catharsis: it's mostly just a series of very long hallways with power-ups at the end and a lot of monsters along the way. A slaughter map in other words, though it does gradually start asking you for more strategy than "blast everything and never stop moving."

But a theme in a lot of these maps is less Halloween and more just, like, complex mazes. It's probably the pressure of a deadline talking, but a lot of these maps seem to orbit around a single central room that must be scaled, solved, and traversed. Take "Blackvenom Retreat," the greenish map seen at the top of the post. Most of the map is in one central lake area, with three big cubist structures sitting above the water. It plays out like climbing a construction site, as you go up ladders and leap between buildings in search of crystals to power whatever this thing does.

Or "Abbeytoir", a candle lit mansion that feels more like it fell out of Wrath: Aeon of Ruin with its endless hallways and side rooms that all confusingly loop back in on each other. It's not a very big map, but combined with how dark it is, how similar a lot of the rooms look, and how everything has at least 3-5 exits, as I opened up most of the doors near the end of the map I completely lost my ability to navigate when everything blurred into endless stairs, hallways, and switches.

And then there's "Us," a conceptually haunting map where the map creator's body has been disassembled and scattered amongst Quake's brushes. A texture for his head and hair unwrap along the skyline, you'll find nipples you can push like buttons, and floating eyes that watch your every step. "Strange" is putting it mildly, but it too is mainly one big room where the puzzle is to climb up ramps and platforms in order to reach the exit.

But there is one map I unexpectedly fell in love with -- "Approach of the Second Sun." This map is good enough it practically feels like it's own whole separate game.

The story is that a second, dark sun is approaching our reality, casting its curse on the land. This provides the map with its unique visual style, where the fog is used to invert the light. Effectively, the closer something is to you, the darker it gets. As objects get further away, they fade into the white fog, making for a game of low visibility and eerie silhouettes. The map uses this in its favor, as you spend most of it navigating a ritual site littered with statues, with the twist being that not everything you encounter is actually a statue.

There are tells, of course. Living monsters have subtle idle animations, so if you pay attention closely, you can pick out what's inanimate and what's alive. But the map also knows this, and plays with that expectation sometimes, bringing certain statues to life when you least expect it. It makes you jumpy and paranoid every time you turn a corner and see the outline of a monster and wait for a worst case scenario that doesn't always happen. It's masterclass stuff, and the map is big enough that it took me almost an hour to ultimately solve (like a lot of the other maps, it is a little easy to get lost).

I've got a few more maps left in Jam 3, and then I've got all of Jam 4 to look forward to. Hopefully there's something a little more seasonally flavorful waiting me.

#quake #writing #map jam #halloween #id software #long #video #the approach of the second sun #Youtube

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It's nice to be able to turn a video around in 8 or 9 days as opposed to the 3-5 month death marches the last few videos have felt like

#sega #sonic the hedgehog #sonic superstars #artoon #arzest #blinx the time sweeper #gut check #bltn #video #Youtube

[bltngames]

I finished Quake 2 last night, and I was thinking of just jumping straight into Quake 2 N64, but the all-new "Call of the Machine" expansion was next on the menu, so I decided to give it a go.

It's pretty impressive how Machine Games stretches these engines. I remember really liking their Quake 1 episode (Call of the Past) from a few years ago, but they made and released that well before the proper Quake 1 remaster had come out, so it was built more for common Quake 1 source ports, so there wasn't a lot of specialization besides "we can do more complex geometry and have bigger mobs."

The above video doesn't show it off, but their Quake 2 expansion directly takes advantage of the new rendering features provided by Nightdive's update. They deliberately and intentionally play with the upgraded lighting engine in some very pretty ways. Feels a lot closer to a modern retro FPS (Amid Evil, Prodeus, and so on).

The whole thing is presented in a format very similar a community map jam. You are dropped in to a hub and get to choose which maps you want to play in any order you like; the idea is that each map puts you in the shoes of a different marine as they attempt to survive the assault on the Strogg army.

"Army" is right. I'd say their Quake 1 episode, "Call of the Past," boosted enemy numbers up to be more in line with where most Doom maps fall.

"Call of the Machine" for Quake 2 laughs in the face of that. One of it's favorite party tricks, at least in the three maps I've experienced, is opening doors with 30+ guys behind it. It's like a more claustrophobic Serious Sam. Thankfully, they do at least adjust things for the larger enemy counts -- monsters that were once bullet sponges now aren't quite so hardy. You'll notice in the above video, in one of the expansion's secret levels, waves of basic dudes get turned to mush pretty easily.

Still, it's tough! I'm playing on Normal here and that's at least my sixth (and first successful) attempt.

To be honest, I'm not sure if I like it. Not the difficulty, I'm fine with that, but like a map jam, the quality of all these maps is... a little uneven? I touted the compass as being my savior in the vanilla Quake 2 campaign, and here, it's an absolute necessity. Some maps are constantly making you loop back around and opening doors to let new monsters out, so I've already gotten deeply lost on what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, or where I'm going. If it wasn't for the compass, I would never be able to even make it halfway through some of these maps, because it feels like they're trying to confuse you on purpose.

Hopefully there aren't too many more maps like that. Which is the other thing: either I did not finish "Call of the Past" or "Call of the Machine" is ten times larger. There's something like 9-12 maps in this thing. It feels nearly as big as Quake 2 did by itself. Absolutely wild that they did this.

Hey that Quake 2 Remaster is nice

I never loved Quake 2. I didn't have a truly gaming-capable PC until 2003 or 2004, and even then, "gaming capable" meant it could run the NOLF demo on the lowest settings. Then again, maybe Lithtech isn't the best measuring stick.

But it was on that old Sony Vaio that I finally started really playing PC games. And my first priority there was Half-Life, which I played absolutely to death and back. It wasn't until three or even four years later that I even remembered there was a Quake 2, and compared to Half-Life, it felt deeply antiquated.

It felt like a game trying to do everything Half-Life was doing, but still clinging to its roots as the progenitor of Doom's instant action. Those two flavors, at least as far as iD Software mixed them together, were more sour than sweet to me. Modern attempts at designing a living world and a robust story were unable to shake traditional first person shooter cobwebs.

A couple years ago, I think after watching Civvie's video on Quake 2, I made an effort to give the game a second shot through Q2Pro. Though my reception was warmer, I still did not come away feeling especially positive on the game. I'm the kind of guy who was already pretty harsh on Quake 1 for just being "More Doom" and Quake 2 is just More More Doom, but now with extra boring "what if Starship Troopers was about cybernetic horror instead of bugs" art direction.

This Quake 2 Remaster they just put out, though? I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying the game. Between the enhanced visuals, gameplay tweaks, and improved enemy AI, the game... doesn't feel brand new. It still feels like Quake 2. But it's like somebody went around and tightened all the loose bolts.

Doom 2016 weapon wheels make managing guns (and inventory power-ups!) a breeze. A brand new (and optional) compass makes sure you don't get lost in levels that could take upwards of 40 minutes to finish. Monsters are significantly more mobile and willing to chase you down. And new cutscenes between levels (and better UI during levels themselves) help fill out the struggling narrative a little bit more, putting greater focus on what it is you're doing.

It is, unquestionably, a better version of this game. I can't imagine ever going back to the original Quake 2 now.

Also, shoutouts to the fact that this is two for two that iD Software has said "If you own these games on Steam, you automatically get the remasters for free."

#quake #id software #remaster #nightdive studios #machine games #Youtube

[bltngames]

And now that this saga is wrapped up in a nice little bow, I feel more comfortable posting it here.

ICYMI: My Sonic Frontiers Criticism/Essay Is Out Now

So here's the last four months of my life come to fruition: the longest piece of edited criticism I've ever put on my Youtube channel, clocking in at just over an hour. For those of you that may be new around here, I am pretty against making long videos. I don't know if I overthink things too much or what, but it's rare for me to have much tolerance for feature-length reviews of things. They can wear me out just watching them, and it definitely wears me out to make them.

But sometimes you just have a lot to say. And I didn't even necessarily say everything I could have said here; there were things I would have added if not for the looming deadline proposed by the video sponsor. That's not a complaint -- sometimes you need someone else to tell you "be done by this date or else." Limitations foster creativity and toiling away at perfection can sometimes be just as toxic as crunch.

What I was trying to say is it's a big video, and it was hard keeping everything straight in my head because there was so much. One of those times where I was glad how I planned things out in advance, because sometimes the thoughts you had four months ago are not the same thoughts you have today, and the thoughts from four months ago were better.

It's already proving to be a bit of a divisive video, given I am going against the grain here. But I'm a big boy. I've spent time on the front lines of these sorts of things before. I know how to handle myself. I mean, half the reason I started my tumblr back in the day was pointing out some of the truly deranged takes I'd get in the replies to my Sonic 06 video.

Though I do worry. I'm getting a lot of people who are... politely declining to tell me what they think. More than a few "I don't agree with you, but I'm glad you released this video" that then never elaborate further. And that makes me feel bad? But why? Do I want to argue with my friends? Not particularly.

But more to the point, are people afraid to argue with me? Do I get too aggressive? I've picked up on a vibe, not just from friends, where people seem to go out of their way to avoid arguments with and/or around me. I mean I literally just said I started my Tumblr blog as a "get a load of this guy in my comments" spotlight (which, for the record, I don't do anymore). I don't want to be scary. But is it scary, or is it a strength? Or am I just imagining the whole thing? History says it's probably that last one, but it doesn't stop me from wondering. It's a lot to chew on.

At the end of the day, I do think parts of this script could have been better. I do kind of get a little mean at a couple points in ways I could have written around. A lot of people are bristling at the opening spiel, where I get more than a little "you people" about the Game Awards voting situation. There's another part later in the video where I also feature actual comments from a previous video and as I was editing it together I thought, "this sounds mean." But given I was less than 24 hours away from that deadline, I just had to roll with it (so I at least blurred the names and cropped the avatars out).

I'll end this post by quoting what I wrote on Patreon day before yesterday for the early access version of this video:

What a march this has been. I've worked on some videos that felt like they took forever, but nothing like this. This felt like the project that would never end. Some of that's because, after pushing myself so hard on the Sonic Adventure 2 video, I tried to be a little more casual with this one. I think I started the script around the end of April, a couple weeks after finishing the game on-stream. The idea was to avoid burnout.  And then the script grew, and grew, and grew, to be the longest script I've ever written. After doing voice over, I had three hours of material I had to cut down. I captured more than 60 hours of gameplay from more than 50 games. Thank goodness I took the time to stop and "storyboard" out this review like I did with the SA2 video. It actually proved to be extremely valuable here -- with a video this long, that takes so long to put together, it's hard to keep all of your ideas hot and ready in your head. Often I'd fall back to the storyboard and realize I planned something months ago that was way better than what I was doing in the moment.  And then in July, a sponsor came calling again. Suddenly I had a real deadline. The last four weeks have been a race to move this mountain of material into something resembling the shape of a video. The last couple days in particular have felt something like a miracle. A work ethic I hadn't tapped into in years suddenly roared to life as I locked down 20+ minutes of video in a matter of hours. It may have involved several actual panic attacks and me running on about four hours of sleep, but here we are. I was revising the script all the way up until a week ago. In retrospect, the sponsor segment probably leans a little too much on SAGE content, but by the time I realized that the train was barreling down the tracks too fast to stop. Thoughts for next time, I guess.

Patrons get a PDF of the script I used, including an unfinished earlier draft I abandoned where I think I was actually even meaner about it, if you can believe it. They also get a PDF of what my "storyboarding" process looks like (which is all just text).

I'll probably toss up a post for all the art I made for this video, too.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic frontiers #sega #sonic team #Youtube #video #essay

[bltngames]

Returning to Donkey Kong Country Returns

I am subjecting myself to Donkey Kong Country Returns again. This game and I have a bit of history.

I'd played Returns on real hardware near when it came out originally, and I sort of hated it. The game felt prohibitively sluggish to me. Some of that is due to Donkey Kong himself, which is made to feel big and heavy like a 300lb gorilla ought to. But some of that was also just, like, a strange problem with input latency. The game did not feel responsive, like I'd push the jump button and it'd take a frame or two for Donkey Kong to actually jump. This made platforming very difficult. Never figured out if I imagined it or if it was a real problem.

Though, for the record, playing Rayman Origins on that same Wii also felt sluggish in the same way as DKCR, leading me to believe it might have been a hardware problem, and not just my imagination. Either way, DKCR made me so mad I didn't even finish the second world, to my memory.

Tropical Freeze, the sequel to DKCR comes, and I receive it for review on TSSZ. I expected to savage that game's controls because of the way I felt with DKCR. Instead, I fall in love with it. Whatever problems I had with the Wii game don't exist in Tropical Freeze. It controls well and plays great. An awesome game.

Which makes me wonder: If everybody else loved DKCR, could it really just a hardware problem for me? Could I play DKCR somewhere else and have a better experience? Eventually, Nintendo ran a program where you got a free 3DS game as some kind of reward for a thing they're doing; like, if you buy a certain amount of games in a short length of time you'd get a free game? I forget. Point is, for my free game, I picked the 3DS port of Donkey Kong Country Returns.

And yet, the latency problem persisted even there. The game just felt sluggish and unresponsive and hard to control in a way I didn't enjoy. I guess it probably felt better than it did on the Wii, but not much. I played through over half the game on the 3DS, getting up to the dinosaur/cliff world, but struggled to muster up the energy to finish the rest of the game.

Which brings us here. I don't know why, but I booted DKCR in Dolphin up a couple nights ago and actually spent kind of a long time setting up the controls so that it felt comfortable. It's worth mentioning that when I played DKCR on real hardware back in 2014, I did so with the Gecko Cheat Code to enable Classic Controller Pro support because I refused to waggle. DKCR's waggle was maybe one of the most egregious "this really should have been a button" things ever, to me. Something Tropical Freeze fixed and was much better for!

Obviously the Classic Controller support isn't needed on Dolphin, so I just set controller binds so that the R trigger grabs things and the L trigger waggles. Setting up the latter was a little tricky, because DKCR actually looks for you waggling both the remote and nunchuk at the same time in order to register a proper ground pound. An easy problem to solve once you realize what it wants, but it took close to an hour to find that answer.

And it feels... better? Actually? More responsive than it did on real hardware. Which makes me wonder if the Classic Controller code was the source of the dreaded latency -- but then, that wouldn't explain Rayman Origins or the 3DS version of DKCR.

But I also discovered some of these Gecko cheats just don't work, which could explain the problems I had with the original version. I guess I'll never know for sure.

I've turned on a few cheats here -- Diddy has infinite glide now, for instance, making him feel more like Dixie does in Tropical Freeze. And the clock is stopped during bonus rooms, because those never needed time pressure. But originally, I had more cheat codes turned on -- namely one which did remap waggle actions to the remote's B trigger. But turning that cheat just broke many other elements of control, like completely disabling Diddy's hover entirely.

Thus, I was forced to figure out how to properly bind waggle to my Dualshock 4's trigger. Ultimately, no sweat.

But I still don't know if I'll finish it. Even with the controls feeling "right," the game teeters on the edge of feeling ever so slightly unfriendly. Not much, but the game is weirdly adversarial, like it's trying to trick me into hurting myself. It's a hard thing to describe, and I don't even think everybody picks up on it, but there's a vibe with some retro games where it feels like you're fighting against the game designer themselves, you know?

Games are never just "difficult" or "challenging." There are different flavors these things come in. The way Dark Souls is hard isn't the same way that a shooter like Raiden IV is hard.

In the modern context, DKCR feels closer to something like Kaizo Mario or I Wanna Be The Guy, I guess. Games where you can feel an omnipresent creator watching you play, and they're deliberately trying to trip you up, as if they're shouting "YOU FELL FOR MY TRAP, LOSER!" and laughing at you.

There was a time early in the NES and SNES era where this kind of difficulty was a lot more common, especially in budget or licensed platformers. It's a level beyond the so-called "Nintendo Hard", where some clueless level designer is lost in the wild west of early game development and thinks this is what people want. Obviously games like Kaizo Mario and IWBTG are exaggerated forms of that, but it was definitely a style of game you encountered a lot back in the era.

I never got that vibe from the original Donkey Kong Country games, but DKCR has just a teeny tiny itty bitty sliver of that feel. You reach the third form of the first boss and it's like, "Really? Isn't this a little bit too much for the first boss?"

Who knows if I'll stick with it, but I've already played three sessions already, so it wasn't some kind of one-and-done sort of deal.

I'm surprised how nice it looks in Dolphin even just at 720p. It wouldn't take much work to put this out on the Switch; just clean up some of the GUI. It scales to higher resolutions remarkably well.

#writing #nintendo #wii #emulation #donkey kong #tropical freeze #latency #difficulty

[bltngames]

A Korean games board rating for "Sonic Origins Plus" was leaked a few weeks ago. What could that be about? Let's talk about it.

After the agonizingly long and extremely stressful production of the Sonic Adventure 2 video, I challenged myself to do something quick and easy. I feel like I could have had this done a week and a half ago, but I haven't been keeping the most healthy work-life balance. Definitely taking an extended holiday after this.

#video #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #sonic origins #retro engine #taxman #stealth #gut check #Youtube

[bltngames]

Oh right! Things are so crazy for me that I actually forgot to post about this here for almost two weeks. That's because this video took four (almost five) months to put together, and I was fully in vacation mode. But then I got pulled out of vacation mode by something! So expect another video hopefully in the next week.

In the mean time, enjoy this, and tell your friends. And if the sponsor offer tickles your fancy, make sure click through to the Youtube page to use the referral link and fill out the form.

#video #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #sonic adventure #remaster #remake #the definitive way to play #Youtube

[bltngames]

Browsing demos on Switch, and finding a Half-Life 1 mod remaster?

So I don't know how many of you remember this, but way back in the day, there was this mod called Vampire Slayer, for Half-Life 1. Browsing the demos on the Switch right now, I hit upon a game called "Vampire Slayer: Resurrection" and for a moment I'm obviously like, "No way that's the same game, right?"

As it turns out: Yes! It is! What???

I only ever played this for one night like fifteen years ago, but it left enough of an impression that I can still remember it by name and occasionally think about it. Vampire Slayer was, or I guess is, a team deathmatch mod where one team is the vampires and the other team is the slayers.

It's been forever, but to my memory, the vampires are just vampires. I think they function as a unified team. They're faster and significantly more agile than the slayers, almost being able to fly for how high they can jump and how fast they can run. The rub: they're melee only. Vampires can only attack by slashing with claws (and biting -- more on that in a sec).

Slayers on the other hand were a little more class-based -- I think you could choose from a four or five different loadouts, and they were mostly about ranged weapons. I remember there specifically being a priest, possibly with a sawed off shotgun and some kind of rosary attack? I remember somebody with a crossbow that launched wooden stakes, too.

The catch, of course, is that vampires can't really die. When a vampire loses all their HP, they appear to fall to the floor, dead. Then, a few seconds later, they... get back up again, just like in the movies. Unless -- and this is the important part -- a slayer can run in and stake the "dead" vampire before they get back up. That kills them for real.

As you can imagine, the character with the crossbow on the slayer side of things was a big deal, because they were the only slayer that more or less auto-staked a vampire instead of just knocking them down. But I also want to say that, much like headshots are important in other shooters, vampires must be staked in the heart in order to kill them, and nowhere else. This lead to interesting scenarios where panicked slayers rushed a downed vampire, missed the heart, and were torn to shreds for botching the stake.

This sounds like the game is balanced very heavily in favor of vampires, and to some degree, it is. I think ideally the balance tried to shake out that vampires were glass cannons and slayers were slow and tanky. I want to say vampires had a low HP cap, something like 75hp, and they didn't wear armor, whereas slayers could armor up like it was Counter-Strike. I also think slayers either had a healing class, healing items, or could find heals out in the map (or all three) whereas vampires could feed to regain health -- the rub being that vampires needed corpses to feed on.

I think a freshly-fed vampire would even get a temporary buff to speed or health, to top it all off. So there was incentive to lure slayers in to a trap where the team could safely feed and then launch a counter offensive once they were all juiced.

Mechanically, you can probably see why it stuck with me after all these years. It's a hell of an interesting idea for a multiplayer game.

I just wonder how much demand there is for it in 2023. I guess I should download that demo.

Honestly, I miss the days of Half-Life mods like this. Vampire Slayer, Zombie Panic, Science & Industry, Pirates Vikings & Knights, The Specialists, The Hidden, Zombie Master... we've lost a lot not having these weird, experimental ideas anymore, even if they weren't enough to support player bases forever. They were often cool as hell in the moment.

Godspeed, Vampire Slayer Resurrection.

Slayers on the other hand were a little more class-based -- I think you could choose from a four or five different loadouts, and they were mostly about ranged weapons. I remember there specifically being a priest, possibly with a sawed off shotgun and some kind of rosary attack? I remember somebody with a crossbow that launched wooden stakes, too.

The catch, of course, is that vampires can't really die. When a vampire loses all their HP, they appear to fall to the floor, dead. Then, a few seconds later, they… get back up again, just like in the movies. Unless -- and this is the important part -- a slayer can run in and stake the "dead" vampire before they get back up. That kills them for real.

As you can imagine, the character with the crossbow on the slayer side of things was a big deal, because they were the only slayer that more or less auto-staked a vampire instead of just knocking them down. But I also want to say that, much like headshots are important in other shooters, vampires must be staked in the heart in order to kill them, and nowhere else. This lead to interesting scenarios where panicked slayers rushed a downed vampire, missed the heart, and were torn to shreds for botching the stake.

This sounds like the game is balanced very heavily in favor of vampires, and to some degree, it is. I think ideally the balance tried to shake out that vampires were glass cannons and slayers were slow and tanky. I want to say vampires had a low HP cap, something like 75hp, and they didn't wear armor, whereas slayers could armor up like it was Counter-Strike. I also think slayers either had a healing class, healing items, or could find heals out in the map (or all three) whereas vampires could feed to regain health -- the rub being that vampires needed corpses to feed on.

I think a freshly-fed vampire would even get a temporary buff to speed or health, to top it all off. So there was incentive to lure slayers in to a trap where the team could safely feed and then launch a counter offensive once they were all juiced.

Mechanically, you can probably see why it stuck with me after all these years. It's a hell of an interesting idea for a multiplayer game.

I just wonder how much demand there is for it in 2023. I guess I should download that demo.

Honestly, I miss the days of Half-Life mods like this. Vampire Slayer, Zombie Panic, Science & Industry, Pirates Vikings & Knights, The Specialists, The Hidden, Zombie Master… we've lost a lot not having these weird, experimental ideas anymore, even if they weren't enough to support player bases forever. They were often cool as hell in the moment.

Godspeed, Vampire Slayer: The Resurrection. Or, uh, whatever it is vampires prefer for good luck.

#vampires #vampire slayer #resurrection #remake #remaster #half-life #modding #switch #indie games #demo #writing #Youtube

[bltngames]

There's a new video review! After the last Sonic Origins video, I figured I needed to follow through with a proper video review, solidifying my thoughts about the final product.

As I explain at the start, I technically made a significant portion of this video twice, with the first version running in to trouble due to Sonic Origins receiving a patch. You can listen to the original, pre-patch audio track for this video on Patreon as a podcast. It's pretty different! The post also goes in to some of the writing process.

#video #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #sonic origins #sonic jam #retro engine #christian whitehead #simon thomley #taxman #stealth #youtube #Youtube

[bltngames]

Before I forget again, here's the newest video! Things have been a little hectic in my personal life these last three days, so I spaced out posting it on the site here.

This video is about Sonic Origins! I mean, obviously, but if you're one of the people out there that thinks I'm too cynical, I present to you a video where I am almost universally positive about something.

This video was born out of a forum post (yes, forums still exist) with some friends who were a little confused about Sonic Origins. Following many of them on twitter, I took it upon myself to explain who all was working on the project and what they were doing. A lot of those friends went from "I don't get it" to "I'm really excited now" -- it was then and there I realized it would probably make for a pretty good video.

If that sounds good to you, by all means, give it a view!

#video #sonic the hedgehog #sonic origins #sega #sonic team #hype #Youtube

[bltngames]

So if you missed yesterday's 12 hour (!!!) farewell live stream, good news! I'm posting the vods up on my Youtube channel. But I'm going to be doing things a little different.

Since a 12 hour vod would be sort of insane, I've broken each game out in to its own video, making for five videos in total. They will live in the Stream Archives playlist on my Youtube channel, but I've also given them a dedicated playlist of their own.

But, if you're that kind of crazy person, I've also left the entire 12 hour vod up for you too. This is notable because I actually had text to speech turned on for the Twitch chat, meaning I could listen to what people are saying. It's fun!

But it does mean that at certain points, like during SRB2 here, that it can get pretty noisy. Later vods quiet down a little as the night wears on and both I and the chat start running out of steam a little. But it's nice to have, given I can be kind of a quiet, chill person. It's like having another 5-10 people on stream with me!

When I cut the vods, I did tend to skip the chatter between games. I tried to preserve some of it, as you'll see some of the vods have 3-5 minutes of lead in (sometimes more), but the only way to get all of the chat between games is to watch the full 12 hour archive.

Overall, I'd say this stream was a success! Very little went wrong despite the fact I was juggling like seven different pieces of software (OBS, Touch Portal, Stream Elements, Sound Alerts, my own Twitch scroller software, Winamp, etc.) It was nice getting to put all of this to use at least once.

The vod posting schedule:

Wednesday, March 9th, 9:30am: Project 06 Shadow Demo

Friday, March 11th, 9:30am: Fortnite Dailies

Monday, March 14th, 9:30am: Indie Horror Grab Bag

Wednesday, March 16th, 9:30am: Balan Wonderworld

#stream #twitch.tv #stream archive #video #youtube #long #Youtube

[bltngames]

This was a hard video to put together and there are things I didn't end up saying that I wanted to say. But it's been hard to stay focused these last few... days? Weeks? months? This whole last year?

#video #youtube #personal